How is the performance with large tile based games?

celaeno

Hello,

I'm looking for a fast cross platform SDK.

Now I've heard corona SDK has some serieus performance issues on android devices, especially when it comes to tile based games. I would like to make a tile based game with, let's say 100 x 100 = 10000 tiles, I was wondering if that would perform very smooth with your SDK before I start programming.

What do you think?

Thanks

gorkem

If you have a huge tilemap, only the portion that's inside the screen is drawn automatically, so you don't have to bother with calculations.

MikeHart

Yes, by using a tile map made with Tiled or a compatible app the performance is awesome. When you use your own map format, then you have to make sure that you set tiles invisible yourself so they don't drag the framerate down. @Atilim said one time that they want to implement something into Gideros so you don't have to do this but I think he had no time for it so far.

celaeno

Thanks, sounds good!

And are you planning to support more platforms?

gorkem

Mobile or desktop?

celaeno

Well, let's say both :-), but maybe something like Blackberry or WP7?

gorkem

For WP7 it's not the case as it only supports C# for development (we need C). For Blackberry, we have no plans.

For desktop, it's our big priority now.

OZApps

@Gorkem,
Desktop has definitely become like the Moon Landing, who gets it first.

it will be a nice, given that there are a few lua based openGL engines that do desktop, but all in their own ways, like LÖVE, Moai (also does Mobile). If Gideros does Desktop, it will be one source code that will work across the two platforms (I can imagine the headaches you will have to support the different hardwares on the Desktop, given the Mac Accelerometers used for Fall detection and HDD Parking and the various *nix and Win hardware)

avo

I don't know the first thing about it but I know some platforms also support google chrome, meaning any desktop could play it.

Would that be an easy or hard thing to do?

This isn't a feature request or anything on my part by the way I'm just wondering aloud, I personally think adding more features to mobile is most important.

OZApps

You are saying Moai, that is the only framework (to my knowledge) that works on chrome. But to me that is like running in a VM rather than native, so it could have some performance issues.

In my opinion, having the ability to build for the Desktop and the Mobile could open up avenues to have a single source and integrated apps. Apple is making (devolving) the Desktop to become iOS, so maybe in 2 years time there might be no Desktop as such.